He shook her by the arm as though to shake the words out of her reluctant lips. The brutal roughness of the action spurred her from fear to indignation. “It’s not love. It’s not even hate. It’s just repulsion and dislike. I can’t bear to look at you, or have you come near me, and to have you hold me, as you’re doing now, is as if some horrible thing, like a spider or a snake, was crawling on me.” Amid the rustling and the splashing of the rain they again looked at each other for a fierce, pallid moment. Another drop of blood on his cheek detached itself and ran down. He had no free hand with which to wipe it off. “Yet you’re going to marry me,” he said softly. “I’ve heard enough of this,” she cried. “I’m not going to stand here talking to a madman. It’s early yet and these houses are full of people. If I give one cry every window will go up. I don’t want to make a scene here on the street, but if you detain me any longer talking in this crazy way, that’s what I’ll have to do.” “Just wait one moment before you take such desperate measures. I want to ask a question before you call out the neighborhood to protect you. How do you think the story of your mother’s and father’s early history will look on the front page of _The Era_?” In the light of the window that fell across them both he had the satisfaction of seeing her face freeze into horrified amazement. “It will be the greatest scoop _The Era’s_ had since _The Trumpet_ became Shackleton’s property. There’s not a soul here that even suspects it. It will be a bombshell to the city, involving people of the highest position, like the Shackletons, and people of the most unquestioned respectability, like the Moreaus. Oh--it will be good reading!” Her eyes, fastened on him, were full of anguish, but it had not bewildered her. In the stress of the moment her mind remained clear and active. “Is the world interested in stories of the dead?” she heard herself saying in a cold voice. “Everybody’s interested in scandals. And what a scandal it is! How people will smack their lips over it! Shackleton a Mormon, and you his only legitimate child. Your mother and father, that all the world honored, common free-lovers. Your mother sold to your father for a pair of horses, and living with him in a cabin in the Sierra for six months before they even attempted to straighten things out by a bogus marriage ceremony. Why, it’s a splendid story! _The Era’s_ had nothing with as much ginger as that for months!” “And who’d believe you? Who are you, to know about the early histories of the pioneer families? Who’d believe the words of a man who comes from nobody knows where, whose very name people doubt? If Mrs. Shackleton and I deny the truth of your story, who’d believe you then?” “You forget that I have under my hand the man who was witness of the transaction whereby Moreau bought your mother from Shackleton for a pair of horses.”